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With the new year upon us, many are thinking about what the next year might hold for the financial services industry. We wanted to share our predictions on how digital, AI, and personalization will transform the financial industry in 2019 and how banks and credit unions will aim to improve customer and member service with better digital features and analytics.

Editor’s Note: The following is third in a series of blogs excerpted from a report published by Celent entitled Defining A Digital Financial Institution by Daniel Latimore and Zilvinas Bareisis . D3 Banking has licensed the content used for general distribution. For the full report contact Celent. The previous installment in this series dealt with the the need for financial institutions to provide customers with a personalized, consistent user experience across all digital channels.

Editor’s Note: The following is second in a series of blogs excerpted from a report published by Celent entitled Defining A Digital Financial Institution by Daniel Latimore and Zilvinas Bareisis . D3 Banking has licensed the content used for general distribution. For the full report contact Celent. The previous installment in this series dealt with the the need for financial institutions to provide customers with a personalized, consistent user experience across all digital channels.

Editor’s Note: The following is part one in a series of blogs excerpted from a report published by Celent entitled Defining A Digital Financial Institution by Daniel Latimore and Zilvinas Bareisis . D3 Banking has licensed the content used for general distribution. For the full report contact Celent.

With digital banking adoption continuing to grow, branch traffic dropping and digital devices proliferating, the current approach is unsustainable for most institutions. That is why the results from the 2015 KPMG Banking Outlook Survey held few surprises. The study indicates that 46 percent of the banks that participated will increase their technology spending the coming year. In addition, nearly 40 percent of the bank executives said they plan to make “significant” investments in IT related to online and mobile banking over the next one to three years.

The promise of lower fixed costs and better efficiency ratios that heralded the introduction of online banking was based on the belief that the Internet could be used to create a self-service environment that would reduce the staffing and technology requirements. In fact, adoption of online banking took longer than expected, and consumers did not abandon the other channels they used to access the services and products offered by their financial institutions.

An IBM report analyzing 2014 holiday spending shows the distinction and complementary nature of digital devices. Smartphones drove 31 percent of total online traffic, nearly two and a half times that of tablets. While smartphones drove the traffic, more purchases were completed on tablets. Tablet accounted for 13 percent of online sales, whereas smartphones only accounted for 9 percent of total online sales.

Amazon was one of the pioneers in leveraging data associated with consumer purchases online to order to market and cross sell additional products and services. One could argue that financial institutions have even more data about their customers than Amazon has about their shoppers. This data can help banks and credit unions to win wallet share, increase loyalty and gain access to new generations in need of financial services.